Teaching Showcase: Brown Bag Series

Resuscitating Writing in Large Classes: Calibrated Peer Review to the Rescue

Stephen Hurst (Research Programmer and Lecturer, Department of Geology)

Improving student writing is a central concern for most university teachers. However, devoting the class time and grading resources necessary to implement a rigorous writing component for a course is often difficult. This is particularly true for large introductory undergraduate classes where the sheer number of students makes providing meaningful feedback or having assignments with multiple drafts a virtual impossibility.

As both a teaching strategy and software, Calibrated Peer Review can overcome many of the barriers to having academically demanding writing assignments in courses and curriculums across disciplines. The software facilitates student evaluation of each other’s writing based on strict rubrics and examples from their instructor. Each student is graded in three ways:

1. Evaluations from their peers.
2. The degree to which each student’s assessment of other students’ writings conform to the rubric and peer consensus.
3. Self assessment of their own writing.

The multiple levels of evaluation in addition to the examples and rubrics from the instructor not only provides incentive for students to write well and thoughtfully, but also creates an environment where students critically assess their own writing as well as that of their peers.

In Professor Hurst’s talk and the discussion that followed, several best-use scenarios were elicited, including:

• Assignments using the system should be relatively short - one to three pages for most circumstances.
• Instructors need to pay close attention to the grading rubric and settings for student assessment of their peers.
• Unique assignments should be used to dissuade cheating and plagiarism.
• The class has to have at least 15 students (although there is no upper limit).
• The software is very good for improving formulaic writing (such as lab reports).
• The software is an excellent means to implement writing assignments in very large introductory classes.

For more information on Calibrated Peer Review see http://cpr.molsci.ucla.edu/ or email Steve Hurst at: shurst@uiuc.edu

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